


Can I End This Journey

by bookhousegirl



Category: Miss Saigon - Schönberg/Boublil/Maltby
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhousegirl/pseuds/bookhousegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Then he finally said ‘I’m home now, my life has to go on here.’” A take on what those words might have meant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can I End This Journey

**Author's Note:**

> When writing this, I didn’t imagine this as Chris and John in any iterations of what they were in the play (Simon Bowman, Peter Polycarpou, Hinton Battle, etc). 
> 
> This is the first fic I've written that I'm happy enough with to post here. All errors are my own.

That first night in Bangkok afterwards is excruciating. It is hot. And oppressive. And dark and sad. Ellen has been packing since the moment they stepped back into the seedy and borderline dilapidated hotel that John had booked for them. Chris looks at her comfortably worn brown suitcase, stuffed haphazardly to the brim with gauzy brightly colored tunics and plain white underwear. It takes him a few seconds, his brain has been on overload since seeing Kim at her place, but he realizes she is not packing for both of them. All of them. He pinches the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes, and when she looks at him, exasperated, raw, angry, he grabs his wallet and slams the door.

Three hours later, John is looking at him with steady pale eyes and a his lips set in a tight, straight line that is just feigning patience and threatening to slip over into something darker and more feral. Chris’ head hurts with a dull throbbing, like someone has bashed his skull with a concrete block. Or put a bullet through her heart.

“Chris, you need to explain to me how you thought it was okay to just walk out of here with no way for any of us to find you.” John’s voice is steady, but Chris has heard this tone before. _I will not get you killed_.

“Ellen’s gone.” Chris stands up, feeling the need to break the too intense gaze that John, still every inch the Marine sometimes, has over him. “She just left. Just like that.” He slams his fist into the small, rickety table next to the makeshift kitchen area.

John’s head drops and he looks up, resuming his hold on Chris’ gaze. “I know. And I’m sorry. But Chris,”

“Yes, I know what you’re about to say. I have a son. I have a son now, John.” Chris paces and his hands automatically go to his wavy hair, pulling so hard that it hurts. He wants it to hurt. “How in the fuck?” He doesn’t ask it to John, but rather lets out a strangled cry that scratches the back of his throat to get out.

John places his large, warm hand against Chris’ chest and pushes him towards the bed. “You need to get some rest. You have a long journey ahead. With Tam. And you’re going to need to be there for him. Go to sleep, Chris.” He says it like an order.

Chris lets his head fall back over the pillow and his eyes flutter closed. He was a sergeant in the US Marine Corps. He served in Vietnam for two years and watched the city burn before his eyes. He left behind, in the wake of total desperation and failure, the kindest and most deserving person he had ever known. And he can honestly say he has no idea to deal with what is about to happen next.

The next morning Chris wakes to soft babbling and an undercurrent of words in a familiar voice that are partly soothing to him and partly fill him with dread. John sits with Tam at the little table, cutting small circles of a too-ripe banana and handing them to the tiny three-year old who is across from him. Tam doesn’t appear too unhappy and for this, Chris is incredibly grateful, for Tam being a happy or well-adjusted boy, or whatever in his constitution that is making him not wail for his mother right now, and for John, who is somehow acting like this is a totally normal Friday, feeding breakfast to his Marine best friend’s illegitimate Vietnamese child.

John looks up when Chris joins them, giving him a tight and slightly wincing smile that doesn’t make it beyond the corners of his mouth. He pours a cup of coffee from the french press and pushes it towards Chris. “Feeling better?”

Chris shakes his head. “I don’t even know how to answer that.” His eyes fall on Tam, who looks impossibly small for age three, not that Chris knows a fucking thing about kids of any age, except that he was one once, and an unhappy one at that. Tam’s eyes are brown and large, and his skin is a little golden, like Kim’s was, and his fingers are slim and sticky now with banana, and deft and clever.

John’s face works itself into an expression like he is going to deliver more bad news. “I need to get back to the office. I have a couple more things to do here before I can leave and go back to Atlanta. I think you and Tam should go on ahead.”

“What? No.”

“Chris, what I have to do might take days.” 

“Then we’ll wait for you.”

“No, I really don’t think you should.” John shakes his head and glances over at Tam, who is focused on his banana slices. “Nothing good can come of staying here longer than necessary. There’s a lot for you both to adjust to. But the sooner you get to America, the better it will be for everyone. You need to go.” Another order.

He’s being emotional and stupid, he knows it. And a fuck-up and a coward. John can surely see that, knows what is going on here. He’s seen it enough. “Are you kidding me right now? I’ve just had all this dumped on me, and you’re going to stay here and just leave me to it? Is this how you counsel some Marine who finds out shit like this, because if it is, you fucking suck,” Chris snaps out, running a hand through his hair that is just starting to become wavy and curly again, and clutching the mug of coffee.

“No, it’s not how I counsel ‘some Marine’ it’s how I counsel you, because you’re my friend and I care about you, and about Tam.” John stands up and starts to unroll the shirt sleeves that he had rolled up in his makeshift breakfast-preparation. “Believe me I know that you’re going through a lot. I’ve been with you on this since day one, I know you haven’t forgotten that. But I also know what kind of man you are.”

John reaches out to touch him, and Chris flinches and pulls away. John, always the more principled, the more steadfast, doesn’t let him, and grips Chris’ shoulder hard and firm.

“You’re the kind of man, the kind of person, who fought to get her out. Who did everything he could for as long as he could. So I know damn well you can do this.” His voice is low and steady, right by Chris’ ear. He squeezes one last time. “I’ll let you know the plan later today.”

*****

Ultimately, the plan involves Chris taking Tam back to Atlanta alone. The plane ride is hell, first stop Sydney, and then Los Angeles, and then Atlanta. Chris isn’t even from Atlanta, he’s from Pittsburgh. But after Saigon fell, he didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do. He was mourning Kim and he couldn’t bear to go back to his hometown and see his father, whom he hadn’t spoken to since before he joined up. John had looked at him, his ashen face, his dim eyes, with nothing there but heartbreak and anger. _Come back with me_ ,  John said, after they debriefed at Camp Lejeune, and Chris, numb and broken inside, followed.

John let him sleep on his couch in a small apartment, John made sure he ate once in a while, John kept Chris in the land of the living, with occasional strong touches and encouraging words. There were nights with Chris smashing things of John’s, it wasn’t fair, he knew it, but he did it anyway, something about it felt real and good.

There were even more nights with Chris spectacularly, horrifically drunk, and John, not at all panicked or judging, pulling him out of the bar, with an arm around his waist, taking him home. There were nights when Chris vomited in the alley behind John’s apartment, when he couldn’t make it up the stairs, even with John hauling him like he was injured in combat. There was John, rubbing small, comforting circles on his lower back as he hunched over, face close to the pavement, that he could feel through his worn flannel shirt. There was John, whispering simple and difficult words in his ear, _You’re okay. You’re home now. I’ve got you. Chris. It’s going to be okay._

Chris eventually recovered, went to veterans’ impact groups at the insistence of John, looked for jobs. And John began work also, with the organization that he was the face of, that he now ran. Unlike with Kim, John had no part in him finding Ellen. Chris did that entirely on his own, and he thinks about it now, her easiness in the beginning and her poor attempts at understanding in the end, as he stands in front of their small brick two-story house on the outskirts of the city. The house is from the 1920s and has all the charm that Ellen once had because she was the one who fell in love with it. They spent the better part of a year fixing it up, sometimes with John’s help. The forsythia bushes are in bloom and the dark yellow, mustard-colored paint looks cheerful.

Tam watches him as he fumbles for the key and leads the small boy inside. Even though it is mid-day, it is eerily quiet, the hum of the air conditioning and a few sparse bird songs as the only sounds. Chris gestures for Tam to follow him, this place isn’t set up for kids, there is nothing here that indicates this is what either Chris or Ellen wanted or thought was going to happen for a long time.

There is a guest room. Chris opens the heavy dark wood door and gestures towards the two twin beds. “This will be your room, Tam,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. He puts the small satchel of Tam’s belongings on one of the beds, and takes Tam’s hand to show him the guest bathroom across the hall. He flicks on the overhead light and thinks to himself that he needs to get a nightlight now.

At the end of the hall is the master, Chris’ room with Ellen. Unsurprisingly, the closet and shelves and bureau are emptied out. There is no note, Ellen is not so sentimental, even though she was fierce from the very beginning about Chris. But now, when the chips are down, she lacks that possessiveness and drive, when the only threat now to them is a tiny three-year old who does not even know where he is or what he is doing here. And he’s not the only one.

Chris instinctively climbs onto the quilted double bed, the worn, patched blanket being one of the only things he brought from Pennsylvania that he saved from his mother. He closes his eyes and tries not to imagine the day he saw Kim pull his own gun out of her dress, the day he boarded a helicopter with John instead of Kim and saw a burning city and people who looked like animals in a cage, struggling for air, the day he stood in a seedy, piss and beer smelling bar in Saigon and said “Good Jesus John, who is she?”

When he wakes up, the sun has gone down and Tam is lying across from him, on his stomach, sleeping, breathing in and out.

***** 

“Do you know who I am?” Chris asks, sitting with Tam on the bed in his room. It is late now, but since they slept before, they are awake now. Their biological clocks will have to adjust.

Chris gently takes out the clothes that Kim, or maybe it was John, he can’t be sure now, packed in Tam’s little faded beige duffel. They aren’t really American clothes, but Chris folds them carefully and puts them into the small chest of drawers in the guest room, gesturing to Tam, who is watching his every move with big, saucer-like dark eyes. He makes a mental note that they will have to go shopping, get some jeans and tshirts and things for an American boy. When he thinks ‘they’ he is not sure who he means.

Tam nods and puts his index finger in his mouth. “Father,” he says softly and Chris feels his heart start to thump faster. Chris pulls out a piece of paper that is heavy like photostock, folded into a book. It is faded now and soft with wear, the picture of a small girl, obviously Vietnamese, with her parents. Chris’ heart is not just thumping now, it is beating wildly, like he is going to fall apart any second and he knows he can’t, not with Tam here, but he wants to. This is obviously Kim and her parents, the ones she saw burned alive, the ones she lost to darkness and death, the ones whose faces were ghosts.

Chris pulls himself off the bed. He touches Tam’s shoulder lightly, so Tam knows not to be scared and he stumbles out into the hall and then the living room. He takes a slip of paper from his wallet, John’s phone number at the Bangkok office, and grabs the black rotary phone from the table and rings the number. This is going to cost a fortune, but he cannot deal and he can feel himself unable to breathe and he just needs to hear from the one person who will tell him this will be okay.

He argues with someone on John’s staff, someone named Ellen, of all things, and finally, finally, John is on the other end of the phone, on the other side of the earth. “Chris, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” he asks, a catch in his voice, like he is genuinely worried.

“Tam has a picture of Kim and her parents in his knapsack.” He pushes back the tears and fights off the sob, attempting to sound normal. “I was helping him unpack. And I saw it.”

John pauses. It’s a long pause and Chris just knows John is trying to figure out what tone of voice to use next, what Chris’ desperation level is here, whether he needs to be sympathetic friend John or stern Marine, you better snap to, John. “Okay, Chris,” is what he says.

“I can’t deal, John, I can’t,” Chris starts to cry in earnest now, his voice rising a little bit hysterically, pitching up an octave or six, and he almost laughs, feels it in his throat and in his lungs, pushing forth, like a living thing struggling to get out. “Her parents, her parents. Fuck, John, she was an orphan too. She lost them.”

Now John snaps into gear. “Tam is not an orphan. Tam has you.” Chris is silent on the other end of the phone. He looks out the living room window at the man on the bicycle who has just ridden by.

“Chris. Chris. Answer me, goddammit, you fucking idiot! Tell me you are going to be okay with him until I get back!”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Not good enough. Try again.”

Chris struggles to stop crying. John is being serious and of course John is right, and he knows he needs to get a grip and be serious too, and now is right about the fucking time. “I will be okay until you get back.”

Chris hears John audibly sigh. “Better. Give me two days. And if you feel like this again, call my parents. They’ll come over and help you. Chris. Hang on. Please.” And then like all things permanent or temporary in Chris’ life, he’s gone.

Two days later, when John finally arrives at 7:30 in the evening, exhausted and bleery-eyed from his flight, he all but collapses on Chris’ dark leather couch in the cool air-conditioned living room. Chris eyes him as he toes off his boots, while pulling John’s travel bags into the house. “You should take a shower and get some rest,” he says. “You didn’t even go home. You came here first.”

“You haven’t let him run away or starve to death yet,” replies John, looking beyond Chris to Tam’s small figure in the doorway. “Hi, Tam.”

“Hi,” says Tam quietly, clutching a stuffed animal that Chris has determined to be a mouse. Tam calls him Chuot.

“You’ve been feeding him, right?” John looks suspiciously at him out of one opened eye, but not without a twinkle, a bit of good-natured mocking. Chris huffs audibly, tossing one of the throw pillows that Ellen bought, an ugly amalgamation of green and yellow and orange paisley, at John’s head.

“Yes, you stupid fucker, I’ve been feeding him,” he says defensively.

John cracks up and reprimands him. “Not in front of your kid, Chris. Jesus, you’d think you were just hanging out in the barracks. You’ve got to watch shit like that now. Idiot.”

“You’re one to talk.” Chris looks over at Tam, who says nothing and just observes, like always. Chris wishes he would talk more, but is not sure he wants to hear what Tam would talk about. Scratch that, Chris is absolutely fucking sure he doesn’t want to hear what Tam has to talk about. “Asshole.” His voice is fond.

John shrugs and shakes out his shoulders and gets up to walk to the bathroom. He stops and without thinking about it, at least it seems that way to Chris, drops down and smooths his big hands across Tam’s little shoulders. “Tam,” John says, in his voice that says I am trying to calm you down, Chris has heard this voice dozens of times. “Tam, everything is going to be all right.”

Tam nods, and John turns to Chris with a grin, the kind that shows all his teeth and crinkles around his eyes, before dropping a quick kiss on the top of Tam’s head, and Chris feels his heart start to clench, because he has not been able to do anything of the sort. And for John, it looks so natural and pure and easy, like he’s able to detach from the pain and the uneasiness and just do that, like a father should. What a nightmare, Chris thinks for about the thousandth time or so.

“I’m going to take a shower and get some rest. We’ll get up early and take Tam out for breakfast at Herren’s. And then we’ll go to Grant Park.” Seeing Chris’ hesitant face, John continues. “Look, Chris, he needs to start experiencing things here. Like it or not, he’s here to stay and he’s got you and that’s it. So you need to start -”

“He’s got you.” Chris interrupts, forcing his gaze to meet John’s slightly confused and consterned one.

John nods and knows not to say anything else, not this time. “Of course. You both do.”

While John showers, Chris feeds Tam dinner. It’s a little late, obviously, and if he were parent of the year, or even parent of the minute, it wouldn’t be like this, but he isn’t, so it is. He manages to make a quick stir fry for Tam. Tam eats rice constantly, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that is in Chris’ favor, since rice is one thing he can do. Chris adds vegetables and some chopped meat and soy sauce, and it’s exactly like the kind of street food in Saigon that Chris ate for months during the war, so he knows Tam will find it familiar and he hopes, comforting. Tam uses chopsticks the way a surgeon works a scalpel, and he eats wordlessly.

Every now and then Tam looks up and meets Chris’ eyes. Chris nods wordlessly and Tam’s mouth turns up in a tiny bit of a smile. The water shuts off and Chris hears the door open and the sound of feet padding down the hallway towards Chris’ bedroom. After Tam finishes his bowl of stirfry, Chris gives Tam a small pat on the shoulder, gently urging him towards the bathroom to brush his teeth. Chris got the little step stool that Ellen used to use to reach the high shelves in their closet and showed Tam how to stand on it to reach the sink. Tam brushes his teeth with a red toothbrush and Crest now.

Chris gestures to his room, indicating that he is going to be gone for a second. He and Tam have these wordless exchanges over and over for the last two days. He can’t complain, it seems to be working, even if Chris knows it won’t last. Chris finds John in a pair of gray sweatpants that are too short for him and a faded green USMC tshirt. He is removing the pillow from the left side of the bed, Ellen’s side.

“You can rack out here, John. I know you’re tired and could use a night’s sleep on an actual bed. We’ve slept in crazier and worse places than this.” Chris hovers at the edge of the doorway, not entirely focusing on John’s bent figure in the darkened room.

John snorts and turns, pinning Chris with his gaze. “While I’m incredibly tempted by that offer to join you in bed, Chris, I’ll be fine on the couch.”

“Okay.” Chris doesn’t want to argue with John about this. About anything. “I just didn’t want you to think that you had to - that you couldn’t...”

John shakes his head and shoves the pillow playfully at Chris’ chest. “As I said, incredibly tempting. Your seduction technique leaves a lot to be desired. You’ve lost your touch, buddy.”

“I don’t think I ever had any touch, but okay, whatever.” Chris smiles and pushes the pillow back into John’s arms.

John’s eyes change a little bit and his voice is soft. “Goodnight Chris. Idiot.”

Chris drops his head and mutters. “Enjoy the couch. Asshole.” 

***** 

“So we need to do some more paperwork or something?” Chris stands in the door of John’s office. His brain flashes to the last time he was here, when John had said Kim was alive, that she had a son, that they could all go to Bangkok, Ellen too. Now it seems like a lifetime ago.

John looks up and smiles at Chris, who is leaning casually against the doorframe. He gestures to the worn-looking leather chair in front of his desk and Chris sinks into it. “Yeah, a couple of things. There’s legal stuff for you. Probate court and getting a judge to officially make you Tam’s parent, so you can, you know, claim him on your taxes and get him health insurance, that kind of thing.” He waves his hand around and smirks when Chris rolls his eyes. “These are realities of having kids, Chris. It’s not a big deal, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s something you do.”

“I know.” Chris fiddles with a place on the chair where the leather is fraying from wear.

“Okay.” John nods once and continues. “Now, school is starting in a few weeks and you’re going back to teaching, right? So, you have to get Tam enrolled in preschool. Plus, it will be good for him, to socialize, to meet other American kids. There’s a preschool here in Atlanta that I’ve been recommending to families, so there might be some other kids like - like Tam there.”

“Oh, so you’re not going to be taking care of him when I’m at work?”

John bursts into laughter, actual laughter, throwing his head back and Chris can’t help but smile. It feels like the first moment not ridden with tension and the abrupt start and stop of so many arguments since the last time they sat in this office. “You’re hilarious. Really hysterical,” John deadpans.

Chris looks down and actually does begin a train of thought he’s been wondering about for a while. “I know you’re not going to do that. But you’ve been helping me all the time. And I appreciate it. So much. You don’t know - you can’t even know, how much. But you don’t owe us, John. You don’t owe me. So if you feel that way, I just want to say you don’t have to. What you’ve done for me already, back to the beginning, is more than enough.”

“I know I don’t owe you.” John’s usual implacable reserve and neutrality give away just a tiny bit. “I am not without regrets about this. I remember what part I played as well as you. I feel I owe Tam. And Kim.”

“You bought her for me, that night. That was all. I did the rest on my own.” Chris sighs and looks at John, finding the usual steadiness there again. “We all made mistakes. Still making them, I guess.”

John’s face changes yet again and Chris cannot really place what is there. His look is wistful and almost fond, with a trace of sadness. He shakes his head minutely and says softly, softer than Chris has ever heard John speak, “Chris, every move I’ve made with you has been a mistake.”

“I don’t want it to be that way,” Chris responds earnestly. He clutches his hands and leans forward a little bit. “You don’t need to babysit me or anything, John. It’s not like before. I - I can do this, I swear to you. Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, go on a date or something? Maybe your seduction technique needs work too.”

Chris isn’t prepared for John’s rueful laugh. “Go on a date? Seriously?”

“Well yeah. I mean, you haven’t had a date since -” Chris trails off, not able to recall when he knew of his friend having a date at all. “Does Yvonne count?”

“Probably not,” John snorts.

“So, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you date. Even when we were at boot camp, I was always talking about girls back home, remember Katie?” Chris grins and looks up at John, who is smiling back at him, one that reaches his eyes. “God, I was obsessed with her. But you, I don’t even think you wrote to a girl back here.”

His friend shakes his head. “No, I didn’t.”

Chris breathes out and says, “So -” and gestures with his hands, as if to say so what’s holding you up now. “If it’s me and Tam who are cramping your social life...”

“Okay, believe me, Chris, not everything is actually about you.” John sighs and a more serious look takes over his tanned face. His blue eyes are very intense and Chris feels like something has changed but he’s not sure what. Like always. “I’m not really one for relationships, okay?”

“So you really just want to fuck girls in Saigon?”

Chris means it as a joke and is surprised when John doesn’t flinch, doesn’t smile, just opens his mouth and says, “Sure. Or guys. Here. I only fuck guys here. Not in Saigon.”

Chris blinks rapidly. He knows that he isn’t actually gaping at John, but he feels like he is. He feels like his mouth is hanging open and his eyes are bulging out of their sockets. He tries to school his face into something cold and neutral, or at least non-chalant, like he has seen John look a thousand times, John who is so good at looking like he can brush anything off with a sarcastic barb or outright disdain.

“Don’t make this a big deal,” John instructs, tightly, eyes still boring down on Chris.

Chris blinks again. “It’s not,” he says automatically. “It’s not a big deal. Not to me. I don’t care.”

John nods, still looking tense and suspicious. “Thanks Chris. That was so magnanimous.”

“I mean it. I’m just surprised, I guess. I mean, in Saigon -” he gets cut off.

“In Saigon I did what everyone else did. Obviously. I went to prostitutes who were women and I had sex with them and I acted like it was a great time, like I couldn’t get enough Asian pussy.” John fiddles with the ball point pen he was just using to help Chris fill out day care forms.

Chris says kindly and slowly, “You could’ve told me.”

“I’m telling you now.” And when Chris rolls his eyes and glares, he replies, “No, I really couldn’t.”

John is adamant here. “We met at Parris Island, Chris. There was absolutely no point that I could have told you. Like I could just casually bring up, as we were getting reamed out by the drill sergeants at SOI, that hey, I like to suck cock? Or when we were in fucking Vietnam? Fighting the Viet Cong and dealing with a shit storm of trouble, hey, I’m going to go off and get me some real ass tonight instead of those whores at the Engineer’s? It’s illegal, Chris. So no, I really couldn’t.”

“But we’ve been back for years. Why didn’t you tell me after we were out? You know me, you’re my best friend.” Chris doesn’t know why he is being petulant and childish, making this about him, of course, and also doesn’t know why he feels a tiny bit heartbroken, if he can admit that. That this is somehow something he should have known, a fact about John he should’ve been privy to. “You must’ve known that I wouldn’t care, that it wouldn’t matter to me.”

John sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face and suddenly looks tired. Chris wants to apologize, but John says, “I thought about telling you. I wanted to tell you. After we got back. But then -”

“Then I went nuts and you had to babysit me?”

“That wasn’t it, Chris. That wasn’t why.” John leans back and regards him. “So now you know and it’s not something I want to discuss, okay? I’m discreet and I’m careful, so don’t worry. I know you and how you like to make stuff a ‘thing.’ Don’t make this a ‘thing.’”

“Well, if anyone has a problem with it, they’re going to have a problem with me. I mean it, John, I’m not going to take shit from people if someone tries to use this as some kind of dumbass reason why you shouldn’t be in Tam’s life. I want to make you his guardian in case anything happens to me, and if people are going to try to take you away, I can’t have that.” Chris realizes he is getting too emotional too late.

“Slow down, okay?” John snaps back to his hyper-professional, hyper-realist self. “First, this isn’t your fight. I mean it. It’s not your war, Chris, so don’t be an idiot, as usual. I’ve been dealing with the reality of this since I was fifteen. Believe me when I say, I can deal. Second, Tam is the most important thing and I will not jeopardize that, and I will not let you, as his father, jeopardize that on my behalf. I appreciate your - passion - about this, but if it comes down to him or me, it’s him. You’re going to choose him.”

Chris shoots out his chin and automatically snaps to his usual mode, idealistic and defiant. “Bullshit. I won’t ever let it come that. You’ve done so much. For Tam, and Kim, and me.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you are so fucking stubborn sometimes! And such an idiot, it’s like you’re actually choosing to be blind to the reality of the world! I know you’re an idealist, but this is Atlanta, Chris, and it’s not the stone age, but it’s not like this is San Francisco.”

Chris smiles. “I’m not choosing to be blind to the reality of the world. I just choose to believe that after all the shit we went through, all the sacrifices we’ve both made, we’re going to be happy.”

At this John laughs again, a real laugh. “Oh god, Chris, you really are too much.” He has an unreadable expression on his face, and says, “So let’s do some paperwork and figure out whether your half-Vietnamese bastard child can get registered for school in time for fall, okay?”

Chris throws a pen at his head. 

***** 

Chris is stretched out, relaxed, lying in the grass in his yard behind the house. The grass is definitely too long, it needs mowing, but things like yardwork and a lot of the time, housework, get away from him lately. He drapes one arm across his eyes to shade them from the fading sun. With his other hand, palm down, he runs it across the too-long grass. It’s going to be September in two weeks, meaning time to go back to teaching and time for Tam to go to preschool.

It’s not that he doesn’t want for all that to happen. Chris loves his job, teaching history at the middle school in his neighborhood, and he feels lucky to have it after all this time, given how tenuous any kind of life was back when he first got to Atlanta. John’s mom works at the school, teaching German of all things, and he knows she was instrumental in getting him the job. Tam needs to go to school and this comfortable bubble they’ve been living in for the past few weeks is going to dissipate at some point and putting it off is just being a hopeless, selfish procrastinator. John would tell him that.

But here, lying in the too-long grass, as the setting sun finally cools down the wretchedly hot August day, Chris feels content for the first time in a long time. For the first time since he heard about Kim, about Tam. He knows he’s not happy, he’s not that foolish most of the time. He’s not happy yet, but in this moment, there is something to be said for content.

John is on his back, within arm’s reach, and he is playing a game with Tam that Chris played with his own father many times as a child, before Francis James Scott became an alcoholic and hit his mother and hit Chris, with Chris leaving for college and then the Marine Corps, swearing he would fight for something good and never look back. It’s a game that Chris always referred to as “airplane.” John has his long, ridiculously lengthy legs in the air, with Tam’s stomach and hips resting on the soles of his feet. He grips Tam’s small hands in his, with arms outstretched, spread open and wide, and is moving his legs back and forth to mimic, supposedly, the movement of an airplane. He is making ridiculous noises that sound nothing like an airplane at all.

Chris giggles, and turns on his side to look at them. Tam is flying, and Chris feels stunned for a second, seeing Tam’s eyes lit, and his mouth open in an unschooled smile, an expression of joy that he has never seen on Tam’s face before. As if it is the most natural thing in the world, without even thinking, he reaches out and sticks his index finger in John’s exposed armpit, scratching lightly against the soft threadbare gray of John’s heathered tshirt.

John squirms and huffs out a breathless laugh under the tickling, bringing Tam down awkwardly, as Tam’s legs start to flail under John’s movements. He pulls Tam to his chest with one arm and punches Chris hard in the shoulder with the other hand. Chris falls from his side back to the grass, head hitting the earth, laughing still.

“You fucking stupid idiot! I could’ve dropped him, Chris!”

“I had no idea you were so ticklish,” Chris is mock serious, threatening to erupt in hysterics at the look on John’s face. He feels joyous too, almost light-headed, and definitely light-hearted.

Shaking his head, John sighs. “I could’ve dropped him. Jesus. You scare me to death.”

Chris turns over again and grabs John’s wrist. Tam smiles, his head rising and falling on John’s chest with the ease of his breathing, John’s hand protectively cradling his back. Chris blinks for a second. “But you didn’t.”

John looks at Chris’ hand encircling his free wrist and pulls gently away, putting the hand against his other, one that is already on Tam’s flat back, holding securely. Chris is momentarily struck by a sensation of familiarity, like this small unspoken gesture means something more. Instead he stands up and shades his eyes in the direction of setting sun.

“Hot dogs for dinner then?” he asks. 

***** 

By the end of September, Tam has been in preschool for three weeks and is talking more than Chris ever thought was possible. He babbles during preparation for dinner, sometimes with a combination of Vietnamese and the English he has been learning. This fascinates Chris and sometimes he plays a game with Tam where they try to teach each other words in the other’s native language. Chris is still not entirely natural, still feels he is not doing a stellar job with Tam, because he’s tense and occasionally heartbroken and too emotional, but he’s trying.

When Tam starts calling John “Dad,” Chris nearly has a heart attack. If a heart attack meant that someone’s actual heart was being ripped in half by a tiny almost-four year old. It happens for the first time at dinner, as Tam sits at the round table in Chris’ kitchen where they usually eat, because the space is just perfect for the three of them. The formal dining room, with a set that Ellen’s parents had given for their one year anniversary is far too big and imposing, Chris thinks, and he hates everything about that room anyway.

Tam is playing with a lego airplane, absently zooming it around his plate. Chris is struggling, as usual, with dishing out a makeshift salad and pouring Tam his milk, and John is effortless, as usual, managing to perch a fucking homemade meatball on the very top of a mound of spaghetti for Tam. He presents it with a flourish and ruffles Tam’s dark hair, and Chris rolls his eyes and John just winks over the top of Tam’s head.

“Tanks, Dad,” Tam mutters, not looking up, his mouth full of spaghetti because Tam has learned to love spaghetti, like any other almost-four year old American boy.

Chris freezes and the look on John’s face right now is not brash or glib or full of joking. Because fuck, the look on his face is broken and cracked open and unsure of whether he should somehow assure Chris of something or whether he should grab Tam and burst into tears. “You’re welcome, Tam,” he says instead, his ice blue eyes not leaving Chris’ green ones for a second.

Chris calmly puts the milk in front of Tam, squeezing his bony shoulder to show that he’s not going far, walks into the living room and just stares. John’s behind him, John’s following him, he knows this.

“Chris -” John’s tone is warning and he gets cut off before he can say the things that Chris knows he is trained to say.

“Just shut up for a fucking second. God,” Chris snaps, curling his fists into little balls as he sits on the couch.

They are both silent for a minute, while Chris just breathes and John just stands, hands on hips, looking both stern and understanding at the same time. Chris puts his head briefly in his hands and looks up. “I was really starting to feel okay about everything. It’s been good, lately, you know. Everything has been - good. It’s not perfect, I know I’m not perfect, I’m not even adequate most of the goddamn time, but we were managing.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, don’t be an idiot about this.” John walks forward, holds his hands out, palms up, imploring. “He’s just heard kids saying it at school.”

“Just, why do you get to be ‘dad’? It’s like he likes you better.” Chris is well-aware he is whining now, but John is just bemused and affectionate.

He sits down on the couch and bumps his shoulder to Chris’. “Of course he likes me better. Everyone does.” When Chris offers up a reluctant smile, John speaks lowly. “Except Kim. And she called you Tam’s father. He calls you father because that’s how she talked about you to him. Just because we call our fathers ‘dad’ doesn’t make it better or more meaningful.”

Chris groans. “God, why do you have to be smarter than me too?” But he smiles and lightly leans into John’s side, an answer back to his shoulder bump. “Thanks. That really helped. I guess you can be ‘Dad.’” 

***** 

Two weeks later, he supposes he should have given some thought to the fact that he brought Tam back in July, and now it’s going to be Halloween soon enough, and John is still picking up Tam from preschool when Chris has faculty meetings, still eating dinner with them almost every night, still tucking Tam in after Chris reads him a story, with a kiss on the head, as Tam mumbles “night Dad” before drifting off to sleep, still stretching his long, lanky frame out on the worn couch. If he had given some thought to it, he might have seen some similarities to another time.

John goes about almost everything with a practised ease of which Chris is at his best, in complete admiration of, and at his worst, deeply jealous of. He was always that way, but Chris recognizes it now as a sort of defense-mechanism, that people won’t question, won’t look too hard if you make everything you do full of grace and competence. There’s something more there lately, than just the usual steadfastness and rationality and goodnatured joking and open affection. Chris sees it; sometimes John looks at Tam both like he’s not even sure if he’s real and like he’s the best thing to ever have happened. And then moments later, his face slips back to one of cautious regard and patience and never feeling or showing too much.

Chris is still himself, overzealous and emotional and angsty, but he knows he’s getting better, has gotten better. And he knows what he and Tam are building, what they have built, with the help of John, is a good foundation. He’s still not sure who he is all the time, but it’s coming together. That feeling of contentment is back and that’s a good thing, Chris knows this.

He’s not sure when his best friend got so hard to read. Maybe he never was able to read John. Chris thinks this might be true, after all he didn’t know a fundamental aspect of John’s life, but that was something John kept perfectly hidden, playing the part of the Marine sergeant in Vietnam to a tee. Maybe things are just more complicated now Chris thinks, but he’s not sure how this could be possible.

He is not sure what possesses him to ask a pretty new English teacher named Lauren to come over for dinner, without telling John or working up for days to tell Tam. He just does it. Chris is a little tired of feeling so hesitant and questioning about everything. But as he’s laughing with Lauren and squeezing her arm just above her elbow gently, he hears the front door open and Tam is running towards him holding out a piece of yellow cake that looks almost like cornbread, and skids to a stop in the kitchen.

John has the same kind of cake in his mouth and is carrying two bags of groceries, facing the door, his back turned, struggling with his keys. “Sorry, it took us a while to get home, it’s raining, and for some reason that makes people drive like fucking morons,” he grumbles, tossing his keys on the table by the door and turning around.

Tam holds out the cake. “Dad got for you.”

“Thanks Tam,” Chris says, dropping down and taking the cake. “Hey, I want you to meet someone, buddy. This is a friend I know from school, her name is Lauren.”

Lauren is sunny and pleasant, her voice reminds Chris of a lady on television who sells soap or gum. She smiles widely and says, “I’m so happy to meet you, Tam.”

“And this is my friend, John,” Chris gestures to where John has finally entered the kitchen, setting the grocery bags on the table that is perfect for just three. John’s face is cautious and polite, but Chris has not missed the tension in his neck, the tiny shred of hardness in his eyes.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” John says in a clipped tone. “Here are the groceries we picked up. I’m going to get out of your way then.”

John turns to go and Chris reaches to grab his wrist. “Aren’t you going to stay for dinner? You always eat dinner with us.”

John looks from Chris to Tam to Lauren and shakes his head. “If it’s okay with you and you don’t need me for anything, I think I’ll drop by my parents’ and maybe check on my own place too.” He nods sharply at Chris, very Marine-like, waves at Tam, and leaves.

Chris blinks and stares after him. He can’t figure out what just happened. 

***** 

He puts Tam to bed and gets spectacularly drunk. It is ten-thirty and John isn’t back yet and he knows he has to teach about the Declaration of Independence tomorrow, but it’s been so long since he has felt like this. Out of control and unhappy and untethered, but unsure why. Chris knows he is a drain on John, he can’t possibly pretend like he’s not. But he thought things were going pretty well and they were kind of reverting back to the way things were before Ellen and finding out about Kim and Tam and coming back home. Home.

The realization slams into Chris and despite his two beers and four highballs of whiskey he is suddenly very sober. He remembers now what his poor excuse for a slow, fucked up brain was dancing around, hovering around the edges of long-forgotten or wished-forgotten memories.

They had been back almost a year. Chris hardly speaks, but for angry lashing-out and sometimes guilty crying, mostly when no one else is around. He makes a phone call once a week, on Tuesday, late, because of the time difference, to the embassy in Saigon and begs to get news of Kim. There is never any news.

“We’re so sorry Sergeant Scott, there are so many people looking for people, it has been chaos here, but keep trying, you never know,” and all this runs together in Chris’ head like a record that is stuck on the last groove, driving him slowly out of his mind. But he calls without fail, and cries himself to sleep on John’s couch afterwards without fail. John never leaves him on those nights, always stays by his side, clutching his hand and just listening to Chris’ grief pouring out of him. _There in the shambles of the war. I found what I was looking for. Through her eyes, I suffered too. So I wanted to save her, protect her. Christ, I’m an American. How could I fail to do good? I never once understood._

John never reacts in any way except to just once squeeze his hand and say, “It’s all right now, I’m with you.” Chris never says anything back, but he holds on tight.

John goes to his parents’ house on a Thursday. Unthinkingly, Chris calls the embassy. Like most things, he is not sure why he does it, except that he feels alone, feels walls in his heart closing in, and he doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

“I’m sorry Sergeant Scott. We do have some news,” the clipped and static-y voice on the end of the line says, while Chris steadies himself against a metal chair at the card table in John’s small kitchen. “We heard actually that a lot of the survivors who had worked at the club you were talking about, the Engineer’s? We’ve been hearing rumors that they’ve either been killed or have fled to god knows where, but I don’t think we’ll be able to find any of them. I don’t know if you’ve gotten word -”

Chris slams down the phone and goes straight to his sea bag that has been stowed next to John’s couch since the day he arrived. He pulls out a package of pills that was prescribed to him by the naval doctor at Lejeune, which he doesn’t talk to John about and he doesn’t really take. He grabs a bottle of whiskey from the third shelf in a cupboard that John keeps behind some dusty pint glasses and a couple of ancient-looking mason jars.

He stalks into John’s room and without thinking opens the drawer of the nightstand next to John’s bed. His hand close around the stock of John’s 9mm. He shuts the drawer and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. _I can’t breathe. I can’t win_.

When Chris wakes he has a splitting headache. The sun is streaming in through the cheap metallic blinds and Chris realizes he is in John’s bed. He feels groggy and out of sorts, like his vision is completely fucked up. John sits on the edge of the bed and looks like Chris had never seen him before. The expression on his face is one of naked worry and anger and sadness.

“I was stupid to leave you. You’re such a fucking idiot, I don’t know why I thought I could leave for a night.” Chris attempts to speak, but John cuts him off roughly. “I should kick your fucking ass right now. If you ever, and I mean ever pull some kind of shit like this, Chris, I will get you fucking committed so you can get the help you need. I swear to fucking god, Chris. Do not push me on this.”

“I don’t even know -” Chris starts and John sighs a terrible sigh and glares at him.

“I got home and found you on the floor of my bathroom, absolutely talking gibberish, drunk with a bag of fucking pills in one of your hands and my fucking sidearm in the other.” John’s voice is broken. “So fuck you, Chris,” he snaps out.

Chris blinks and struggles to sit up. “Holy shit,” he murmurs, touching his head and wincing. “Oh my god, John, I am so sorry. I can’t even -”

John shakes his head angrily. “Shut the fuck up, you fucking idiot.” His face contorts and he lifts a hand towards Chris’ head. Chris thinks he is about to get punched, but John just incongruously, strokes his hair, which is more coppery than strawberry in the light, touching Chris’ brow anxiously. “Chris, if you would’ve done it...I don’t know...”

Chris grabs John’s wrist and holds it tightly. He feels suddenly incredibly sober. Chris nods and wants John to understand this as he says, “I’m home now. My life has to go on here.”

Things do start to change from there. John encourages him to go to veteran’s groups and he goes. Chris gets a renewed prescription for sleeping pills, to help with the nightmares and the insomnia and takes them under John’s watchful eye. John seems more relaxed and trusting and things are honestly getting better. John doesn’t hover as much anymore, seems all right with letting Chris be, and even some nights when he says he is going to his parents’ house, but comes back late, and Chris can smell cigarettes and alcohol and the faint scent of something darker than perfume. He feels less like Chris’ babysitter now, and what he does feel like Chris isn’t sure but it’s good, because John’s joking with him and smiling and life finally feels real again.

John has always touched him, a gentle hand on his shoulder, a tug of his arm to steer him in the proper direction of cereal in the Piggly-Wiggly, a friendly punch on the shoulder, or a more direct shove when he wants to make a point. The touches are more personal now, a squeeze to the back of his neck, and Chris vaguely remembers the press of John’s knuckles against his skin and that they lingered for a second or two, the brush of John’s hand against his as they take a walk in the park that feels almost deliberate but couldn’t really be.

John has always encouraged him, sometimes demanded things of him. But now it’s not the words that are tentative, it’s the look behind them, as if he’s afraid of breaking something fragile in Chris’ resolve to pick up the pieces of his life. “I’m proud of you,” he says, after they attend Chris’ fourth straight veteran’s meeting together. “You’re going to be great,” he says, after Chris comes home and tells him about his successful job interview at the middle school.

Chris isn’t sure what it is that makes him say one Saturday, as they’re watching the Braves lose in spectacular fashion on John’s tv in the living room, “I think I should start looking for my own place.”

“Okay.”

Chris frowns at John’s raised eyebrow and obnoxiously questioning tone. “I mean it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“John, I’m serious. You know that I appreciate everything. I couldn’t have done it without you. But it’s been a year now.” He pauses and tries to think before he keeps speaking. “And I know now, I know that what happened over there, it’s over. It’s over and I can stop thinking about going back for her or feeling guilty about how I didn’t get her out. It’s taken a lot for me to get there, but I’m there. School’s going to start soon, and you’ve just started working with the foundation...”

“And this means you need your own place.”

“Do you really want me to stay? Don’t you want your own life back?” He’s kind of incredulous right now, but John appears typically non-plussed, tilting back his head to take the last swig of his beer. He is not sure why John is acting like this, making him feel like this, and he has a strange, unnameable feeling creeping along his skin.

John stands up, strides to the kitchen, and pulls another beer out of the fridge, gesturing with the bottle to Chris, to ask if he wants one too. “You’re going to be over here all the time anyway. It’s kind of pointless.” He is leaning agains the doorframe casually, his long arms crossed over his chest.

“Yeah. But,” Chris halts and begins again with renewed confidence. “But I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Okay, Chris. Whatever you want.” The look is still bemused, testing, almost.

Chris looks into the opening of his bottled, swirls it a little. “Besides, it’s time your couch got some action other than my lazy ass, don’t you think?” It’s an attempt at a joke between them, Chris wants to rid himself of whatever this sinking and uncomfortable feeling is in the bottom of his stomach. Maybe he’s had too much to drink and not enough food.

John literally sprays the beer from his mouth onto the carpet between the kitchen and living room. His eyes are wide, but then he’s laughing as he says, “Fuck you. You’re such a stupid idiot. Look what you made me do.”

“You’re okay with this?” Chris responds, after giggling until his stomach hurts and whatever strange feeling he had just a few minutes ago dissipates into this easy camaraderie. He gets a handful of paper towels and presses them into John’s hands.

John’s smile is warm and disarming and, Chris thinks for a fleeting and soon forgotten second, happy. He thinks, and wants to say _you know I don’t want to go. But I have to go._ “You’re such an asshole,” Chris says out loud instead, and figures John knows what he means.

He looks at apartments nearby and finds one to his liking two weeks later. It’s the weekend and he arranges to sign the papers and put down a deposit on Wednesday. He’ll move in at the end of the month. John just looks at him skeptically and says, “Okay, Chris.”

He meets Ellen on Tuesday, standing over a display of cantaloupe in the grocery store. He can’t figure out how he’s supposed to tell whether they’re ripe or not, and can’t remember if John even likes cantaloupe. He’s shaking his head in half-disgust and half-amusement at his predicament when she taps him on the shoulder and says, “You’re trying to figure out how to tell if they’re ripe or not.”

He just laughs and after joking about whether one can tell the ripeness of other fruits and if it’s just the cantaloupe that is exceedingly difficult about this sort of thing, he asks her to come over for dinner that night. It’s a Tuesday and he’s going to sign the papers for his new apartment tomorrow, and it’s a Tuesday and he doesn’t need to call the Embassy about Kim, and it’s a Tuesday and John will be at his parents’ until well after dinner.

They’re at the table in John’s kitchen, laughing comfortably over the chicken parm Chris has made and having a second glass of wine when he hears the door open and John struggling with his keys in the lock.

John has a file under his arm and a cookie in his hand and his back is to the kitchen. “Sorry, I cut dinner short tonight. I wanted to come home. I wanted to talk to you about something -” and when he turns around he sees Ellen, and his face quickly arranges itself into its usual stoic mask, but not before Chris sees a flicker of something in his eyes. Disappointment or fear or hurt, he can’t be sure, but it’s gone in a second.

“This is my friend, John.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” 

***** 

It is after one in the morning and Chris has long since given up on teaching the Declaration of Independence at school when he finally hears John’s key in the lock. John enters the house, this time carefully putting his keys on the table instead of tossing them. Chris sees him straighten his back and roll his shoulders as he regards Chris and sits down on the couch after pushing off his boots.

“God, what time is it, Chris? Are you drunk or something?”

“No.” Chris knows what he is doing now and there is no hesitation and no second-guessing. He feels like he did that Saturday when he said he should start looking for his own place. Except this is kind of the opposite. “You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about. What were you going to say to me?”

John opens his eyes wide, like he might be dreaming or wandering around in a memory. “What are you talking about?”

“Three years ago. You were at dinner with your parents and you purposefully came home early. You said you wanted to talk about something.”

He knows the penny is dropping for John now, because that smug, eat-shit look is wiped off his face and replaced by one of slight remorse. “And Ellen was there, because I had invited her to dinner. And you had a look on your face that I’ve only seen that one time and didn’t think about again. Until today when you came home with Tam and Lauren was here.”

Chris presses on. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?” he asks, leaning forward slightly, so that he is almost in John’s space.

When John doesn’t answer and looks away, Chris slides closer so that his knees are almost touching John’s. “John,” he says, softly. “John, you should’ve told me.”

John’s body almost convulses as he lets out the breath he’s been holding for the whole time Chris has been talking. “For what, Chris? Why? What good would it have done, then? After that?”

“It might have helped with tonight,” he offers, raising an eyebrow in return to John’s incredulous glare.

“No it wouldn’t have. Because I still made the same mistake.” John shakes his head a little bit and purses his mouth. “Every move I’ve made with you has been a mistake.”

Everything is clear to Chris like it never has been. Confidence in him has been at an all-time low and he doesn’t have a good track record, post-Saigon, of acting like an adult and making good decisions. He knows he has failed John, has failed Ellen, has failed Kim, and in some ways, has already failed Tam. But he has never been one not to say what he feels, what he wants, what he believes. Despite being “a fucking idiot” as John so fondly says, it’s his passion and his ideals that make him the person he is. He feels confidence as he takes John’s hand in his and surely, gently, threads their fingers together.

“There is no world in which telling me how you feel is a mistake.”

John sighs and looks at their hands like it’s some kind of foreign matter and his brain cannot handle the data. “This is why I love you, Chris. I’ve never met anyone like you. You live in this world of hope. Despite all the shitty things you’ve seen and had to do. You believe there’s a place where life still has worth.”

Chris nods. “The story of my life began again.”

“I’m a realist. Ever since I was fifteen years old and knew I was different. I couldn’t be so careless with how I felt. Not with you and not with everything that happened.”

John shakes his head again, as if trying to talk himself into something or convince himself of this, and the way he looks at Chris is full of sadness. “You wanted to save her. And I wanted to save you. I have regretted that day so many times, Chris, you don’t even know. You were being selfless and completely stupid, and so full of love for her, and I was selfish and all I could think about was getting you out. The things I said to you that day. What I did, what I absolutely had to do, to get you on that helicopter. Sometimes I fucking hate myself for it.”

“Don’t do that.”

“And sometimes my hate just buries the love.”

“I can assure you, it doesn’t.”

John snorts. “Well, you’re an idiot, that’s well-established, so I don’t doubt you’re assured of that.”

Chris smiles. He can’t help it. “What are we doing here, John.” It’s not a question. It’s an offer and he hopes John hears it that way.

“What, because you’re suddenly gay now? Because you weren’t just attempting to pull some girl named Lauren who works at your school a few hours ago?” he questions, flicking his finger along a hole in the knee of his jeans, where the fabric is worn and fraying, and his skin shows through. “You’re interested in me now, because you used your tremendous brain to figure out that I’ve been interested in you since probably the day I met you? It’s not exactly how things like this work, Chris.”

“No. I don’t know if I’m suddenly gay now or whatever. You said ‘home.’ Tonight and the other night. That means something to me. It was home then, when it was just you and me, and it’s home now, with you and me and Tam.”

“I don’t know, Chris. There are problems here. There are going to be problems.”

But Chris feels brave. He raises their entwined hands and gently brushes his lips along the knuckles of John’s hand. “Then we’ll get through this. We’ll pull through,” he murmurs, opening John’s hand to hold the palm agains his own cheek and lean into it a little bit. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Chris is a little bit in love with the look on John’s face. It is open and in awe, his mouth quirked up in the tiny start of a smile, and his blue eyes trying to betray the gladness that Chris can see there. His eyes close and open again and he looks at Chris.

“I came home early because I was going to tell you that I didn’t want you to sign the papers for the apartment the next day. I was going to tell you that I wanted you to stay.”

John looks a tiny bit embarrassed and says quickly, like he wants to get it out before he can take it back for fear it sounds stupid, “That’s what I thought you meant, when you woke up that morning and said you were home, that your life was going on here. I thought you meant us. With me. And I wanted that too. I had been trying to say it in lots of other ways to you.”

The clock reads two in the morning now. Chris can hear the crickets, still singing like it’s the summer, in the lulling, whispering Atlanta night. He hears the dog barking a few houses down the street as a car drives slowly past, playing the Rolling Stones out the open window. He thinks of Tam, to whom he read the story of Peter Rabbit, and kissed on his head and promised him that John would be back the next day, breathing gently in the next room, alive, and in America now.

Chris stands and says, “I really should go to bed.”

“Yeah, okay,” John nods, and kicks his legs out so that he can sprawl back across the couch. He raises his arms above his head and locks his hands underneath like a pillow. “I guess we can talk more tomorrow.”

“I meant you should really go to bed too.”

Chris can feel the air changing, can feel the energy, the difference between them, like he has taken an irrevocable step now, and can’t be pulled back. Usually it’s John who is ready to stop him, ready to keep him from running off the edge of his overzealous fantasies about life and happiness, and leaping into the void. But this time he doesn’t want to be pulled back. He wants John, running with him, leaping together.

John doesn’t say anything for almost a full minute. Finally he gets up and pushes Chris in the chest, crowding him against the living room wall. “This is your offer to join you in bed? God, I am so right about your seduction technique,” he breathes into Chris’ left ear in a dangerously low voice.

“You’re such an asshole,” Chris stutters, barely able to control his own breathing, as John nips his ear lightly with his teeth and goes from sucking his earlobe to his jaw and his neck. John’s tongue is running along his collarbone and Chris feels his brain short-circuiting. This is his friend, his smart, funny, easy, wonderful friend, and Chris wants him. He wants to kiss his perfect cheekbones and run his hands through his short dark blond hair, he wants to lick into his mouth and taste his tongue.

“I mean it, Chris, if you don’t want this -”

“I want it.” Chris feels sure as he uses Herculean efforts to pull himself off the wall and remove John’s hands from where they had landed, pinning his hips. He circles his fingers around John’s wrist and walks them down the hallway. 

***** 

“If this is some lame-ass attempt of yours to get me to publicly display affection for you, it’s sadly not going to work,” quips John with a quirked eyebrow at Chris’ apron which says Kiss the Cook.

It is Memorial Day and John’s organization annually sponsors a picnic for the families that have been reunited through its efforts. It has still not been a year since Chris held Kim as she died in his arms, since Ellen stormed out of his life, although their divorce was finalized a month ago, and Chris shared a glass of champagne with John, took Tam to get ice cream, and then cried on the couch for hours while John ran his strong, faithful fingers through the small curls at the nape of his neck.

Sometimes Chris feels like life is just too much and he still doesn’t always know how to handle it. He has been a student, a kid estranged from his family, a Marine Corps sergeant, a lover to the most beautiful, deserving woman he has ever known, a husband to someone whose cruelty and selfishness shocked him to the core, a teacher, a friend, and an endless fuck-up.

And now he is a father to a bright, smart, happy four year old who doesn’t even seem to remember the horrors of where he came from, and for that, Chris thanks whatever stars led him safely out of Vietnam. He isn’t sure he deserves to be here and have this. But he does and he’s glad.

He has John. John’s steady reliance. John’s firm hand on the small of his back. The squeeze of his fingers when he knows Chris is having a hard day, getting too emotional and worrying too much. The encouragement of his words, and the curt nod of his head which always means well done and I’m with you and I love you. And the quiet, intoxicating gasps of pleasure he makes when Chris trails a line of kisses across his toned stomach lined with fine blond hair, when they’re alone in their bed, the way he arches his back and groans out Chris’ name in a way that Chris has never heard anyone do before, when Chris takes him in his mouth, licks him and sucks until John is hot and writhing, and coming, and Chris feels privileged to have this too, to know this man in all ways.

He turns to John and smiles back at him. “Look, I don’t argue with Brian’s wife, and she’s the one who told me to wear this,” he gestures to where Brian’s wife, who can be a truly frightening woman when she is in charge of something, commands people to drop off their potato salads and pecan pies and 2 liter bottles of Coke. Chris is manning the grill and already has a little pile of hot dogs assembled for the swarm of kids that will descend upon them. “Do with it what you will.”

“I think I’ll save it for later,” John says in a low voice that makes Chris shiver a little bit. John claps a hand on Chris’ shoulder in the way a good friend would, because that’s what they are in public, the only way they can be, and it’s only Chris who notices the finger that strokes his collarbone underneath his worn tshirt.

“Yeah, you do that.” Chris turns to him and smirks this time, a challenge almost, and John grins back. Challenge accepted. The sun is bright and John looks beautiful, tall, and golden and glowing in it.

“Dad!” Tam discovers that John is here and he leaves his group of friends, barreling towards them. “Look what we found!” He opens his palm to reveal several lady bugs crawling in his tiny hand.

John bends down to look and touches one gently. It crawls onto his finger. “Amazing,” he says to Tam. He bends to kiss his head. Tam throws a scrawny, dirt-streaked arm around John’s neck. He smacks his lips against John’s cheek in a quick, still baby-like kiss. Chris wants to bottle moments like this, because Tam has learned to be open and loving with them, and it still seems so innocent and unspoiled and unselfconscious.

John’s mouth forms a line that is all affectionate parental resolve, trying not to look at Tam like he’s the stars and the sun and the moon all rolled into one and not being entirely successful. “Go play with your friends.”

Whatever it is between them is still working itself out. Chris is not sure what it is now, can’t name it, can’t even tell people about it. But he feels confidant in it, in what he’s always had with John, and what it will be. John is Tam’s dad and Chris’ best friend, and sees him at his worst, but somehow always believes the best. Chris knows that he is the idealist and John is the so-called realist, but he also knows that John believes in Chris more strongly than anyone or anything, and for that, you have to be a bit of an idealist. Or at least a man deeply in love. And John, Chris thinks, with a secret smile, is actually both.

“Hot dog?” he asks, handing one over. He is happy. He knows it. He has fought so long for this in any iteration, with Kim in Saigon and dreams of America, with Ellen in America and dreams of Saigon, and now he has it, standing over a grill at a park in Atlanta, surrounded by his son and John, on a beautiful afternoon in May.

“Yeah, okay, Chris.” John takes the hot dog and stares at him for a few seconds before breaking into a true smile, that shows his teeth and reaches his eyes.

They watch Tam together, running and carefree with other kids who are just like him, born of both a place full of mystery and a place where life still has worth. Tam belongs. Chris curls his hand around John’s elbow, momentarily not caring who sees and what they might think, because he feels alive and he wants to touch John, to communicate with him somehow, and he won’t be denied this. He strokes the soft, tanned skin there, rubbing a small circle. There’s warmth in his chest. _In a life where nothing seems real, I have found you._


End file.
